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Mazda wins 2008 LA Design Challenge

The Mazda Kaan concept has won the fifth annual LA Design Challenge competition, part of the Design Los Angeles automobile designer's conference. The award was presented during the second press day of the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show, following a designers' luncheon and keynote speech by Daniel Simon, visionary futurist and author of Cosmic Motors. As we reported last month, nine local Southern California design studios entered the competition to envisage how motor sport vehicles might be in the year 2025, answering the theme ‘Motorsports 2025'.

New Nissan Micra loses ground in Europe over quality issues and no diesel option

Nissan Micra Sales fall in Europe Nissan trumpeted the new Micra as its ‘Global Compact Car’ in the run-up to its reveal at Geneva last year. And by ‘Global’ they meant ‘Produced in Emerging Markets’. Which is a big change from the last generation Micra which was produced in Sunderland, but a move that seemed to make sense in a world where small cars in emerging markets are a priority, and where cost of production is much lower.

Honda back in F1 as engine supplier to McLaren from 2015

We reported that Honda were looking likely to be heading back in to F1 as engine supplier to McLaren nearly two years ago, and this morning Honda has confirmed they have formed a joint project with McLaren to supply engines and energy recovery systems to McLaren from 2015 in a joint project with the McLaren team becoming McLaren Honda. The new F1 partnership revives a very successful period for McLaren when it last used Honda engines and Prost and Senna dominated F1 with Honda powered McLarens, and fits in nicely with Honda’s return to making supercars with the new Honda NSX. Formula One engines will drop to a 1.6 litre V6 in 2015 – with a turbo – and it will be very easy for parallels to be drawn with the V6 hybrid plant Honda are using on the new NSX, which is going to do its credibility no harm whatsoever.